The lead single from Cult finds Anthony Raneri challenging himself to rise to the occasion. "It's meant to be more of an uplifting thing," said the singer. "If I want to make something of myself, build a legacy, accomplish something, then I've got to just go do it. The time is now to do something if you ever plan on it."
Anthony Raneri does some ghostwriting, and he wrote this song when he was working on a session for a Pop singer, which explains the smooth edges. Raneri won't give up the ghost by saying what artist he was writing for, but he told us: "'Time Has Come' was a really interesting one because I wrote it within a session where I was trying to write a Pop song for somebody else. So it was definitely a different approach. I wrote it completely within the computer on synthesizers and stuff like that. So it was a really unique approach for me to have as far as writing a Bayside song goes.
It was almost like being able to do a cover. It's like they do those punk-goes-pop compilations, and that's fun for a punk band to take a pop song and just rock it out. So I got to do that, except it was my own song. That was a really fun one to work on." (Here's the full Anthony Raneri interview .)
Asked by HMV.com why Bayside decided to title the record Cult, Raneri replied: "The word 'Cult' is a name that's followed our band around for the last few years. The fans just started calling themselves that a while back and we wanted to pay homage of them with that. Also, a real theme for this album is legacy, in terms of my lyrics and how we feel about the band, so it's a good name to sum up the history of the band."
This song finds vocalist and lyricist Anthony Raneri putting the music business under the microscope, as well as Bayside's place within it. He said this song "has a lot to do with my career and my legacy as a musician. You look at bands like mine, and it's hard to ignore that a lot of Pop-Punk or mid-2000s Emo bands just sort of disappeared."
"Fortunately for us our band has been able to make it through a lot of that," Raneri added. "There are definitely days when I feel like I'm a novelty, but like the line in the song, I think I'm twice the man I used to be."
